Of Stone
by AmberPalette
Summary: Two years after the events in the bookmusical, Erik, the disfigured musical genius driven to madness and hiding under the Opera Populaire, resigns to his solitude and relocates his haven to another part of Paris, where he is forever changed.
1. Prologue

**Of Stone**

**A Phantom of the Opera fanfiction**

By AmberPalette (Amber Stitt)

This work is a real one-shot deal done just for fun, a rough draft I wrote on a whim after being profoundly affected by the story. I doubt I'll ever revise it because I'm a college graduate student, so I have other things occupying me. Sorry. ;;

**_Be warned, Purists of either the book or musical camp, I do not choose to ally with only one of you! _**

**_Grin_**

**_This story is a mixture of ideas from four resources_**:

**First** the Gaston Leroux novel The Phantom of the Opera, **secondly,** the Susan Kay novel Phantom, **_thirdly_**_ and most heavily, the musical and film by Andrew Lloyd Webber_ (_in fact, those of you who do not particularly enjoy Michael Crawford and Gerard Butler's somewhat younger, more handsome Phantoms may not be interested in my work_) and **fourthly**, from an ongoing RPG with member "Megavolt'sGirl" (AKA Gabby), whose characters Angelina and Lexy have strongly influenced my characters Claire and Joan, and whose female protagonist shares the name of mine (although not the history or personality): Odette. All Phantom of the Opera canonical characters are © Gaston Leroux and Andrew Lloyd Webber. I'd love to have their genius but alas, I don't.

_Do NOT expect me to take sides regarding Erik or Raoul in this particular work_!

I genuinely like them BOTH in the MUSICAL/FILM and I tend to disregard the _total ass_ that is Raoul in the BOOK. The focus isn't really on the love triangle with Christine anyway, though it is definitely confronted at certain points in the plot (wait and see ).

Further, a lot of people who make Erik anything but a total scheming monster classify their stories as "Erik Out Of Character," but I hesitate to be so prescriptive. I think he has kindness and real love in him deep down, and I'm going to investigate the possibility here. So…enjoy! And please review!)

_"God had been so cruel to the man in front of her._

_One side of his face was almost perfection although he didn't realise it. His jaw was strong, smooth, his cheek masculine and powerful. His eyes held a beauty that no man she had met in her life could rival. Yet the other side was sinister and dark. It was as ugly as anything she had ever seen, puckered and scarred, it was a mess of pure evil. The contrast between the two sides were harsh and the splendour of his left side was as magnificent as the horror of his right was repulsive."_

_From Coincidences by Immok, following an online discussion of the Opera Ghost in question_

_"There's a gibbet! That is why I call my wood the torture-chamber . . . you see, it's all a joke. I never express myself like other people. But I am very tired of it! . . . I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture-chamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom! . . . I'm tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on week-days . . . Are you listening to me? Tell me you love me . . . no, you don't love me. . . but no matter, you will! . . . Oh, I don't know what I am talking about!"_

_Erik, from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux_

_"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."_

_Ezekiel 36:26_

It was a warning hissed into the blackness of night. The only kind of communication he had ever known: one of darkness and danger. He forced himself to care, now that _She _was gone. Oh the ecstasy of moments past . . . he had been so happy entwined with . . . . with . . . .

_"Haste! Make haste!"_ were the words of warning. The severe, delicate woman, with the wrinkles that whispered the coming of old age, slashed a taffeta-clad arm into the inky void surrounding them, in the narrow and winding stairwell that led above ground of the Opera Populaire. He saw her long thin arm flailing like a bat's wing, glowing, faintly and translucently, in front of her dimlit torch. He forgot how to move, then, transfixed by the vision. He decided he would write an opera about it . . . and then recalled that he had no cause to tempt the notes out of silent hiding.

Now that _She_ was gone.

A hand as small and gentle as a child's took his sweat-soaked arm and tugged. He jerked violently, with a gasp, finding any contact to his skin intolerable, as abrasive as Persian sand. Still the hand coaxed him forward in the darkness, and a frail voice, a girl's, urged, "Opera Ghost . . . Erik. Come, Erik. Mama says to hurry."

"I am lost," the destroyed Phantom replied, every syllable hoarse and quavering. His heart thundered. He reached up for his wet, mercilessly torn and disheveled hair, to push it from his eyes, in vain.

In her innocent simplicity, the girl took this remark as a simple bewilderment of physical direction, and she stroked his arm once, soothingly, as though to tame a very frightened, bruised stray cat. He almost enjoyed it. "It's alright," she cooed, " Mama knows the way." A hint of skepticism trailed her words, an unspoken "and I thought you did, too." And then, more sensitively, she added, "I saw your music box monkey before Mama found you, when the police mob was coming. It was very beautifully carved. . ."

_"Stop it, child!" _He felt himself possessed by a frighteningly explosive fit of anguish, which manifested as pure rage. His muscles went rigid as rope as he screamed, making girl and mother both jump as, in his frenzied sorrow, he clawed his fingers into the flesh of his own chest. "_It was as ugly as my face! As ugly as me, Meg! _Or did you not glimpse my scars before we began our flight? She lay with me because our faces were obscured! Oh, Christine . . . _Christine_!"He shrieked it, bellowed it, felt his throat ripped to tiny little glass shreds, turning around and clutching for his darkness. "Let go, Meg . . . _Oh let go!_ Oh give her _to meeeee _again, _oh her everything mine_…" His face twisted into a greedy, maddened grimace of glee, but he had no strength to really struggle. His breast was cutting at him from within, burning and blistering, his left arm gone numb. "Oh my . . . chest. . . I can't feel . . . _oh God this pain_ . . . " Again he weakly grappled with Meg Giry, losing, at last, his only true power: his thunderous voice.

The young ballet dancer's fingers tightened around his wrist, as though she were more afraid to set him loose in such a state than she was to cling to him. "Mama, his _heart_ . . ." Her voice indicated a sob grown thick in her chest.

"He is imagining it," a voice that was dark and almost sinisterly understated cut into their debate and froze them all in place. A voice from the door above, their destination. "It's in his mind. He is not a boy anymore, granted, but he is still too young and fit to have cardiac arrest, Mme, Mlle. He is simply hysterical enough to conjure himself a heart attack."

"Nadir," the old lady in the forefront of their procession breathed, "are you . . . ?"

"Yes," the crisp male tone retorted, with an odd warble to the "e" that signified an individual not of French soil. There was a rustling in the shadows, and another musty, stifling draft in the hidden staircase, and a man's form could be made out billowing downward next to the gossamer-winged dame. "I am sure. He has been complaining of stomach affliction as well, Antoinette, in the days of … of a certain young lady's . . . absence . . . .before this evening, when she fled her husband and . . . and returned and the Vicomte brought his mob. It is his gall bladder. Sheer stress. You must focus on the task ahead—on helping him to escape the wrath of so-called justice. Erik cannot die if you have gone to such trouble." There was a hint of macabre humor in this new accomplice's final words.

Erik, the fugitive in question, stood rigidly still, quietly giggling to himself, like a stone monument with a madman's voice. "Ah, the Vicomte, he gives away the 'certain young lady' when he says _veeee-cawmpte_… I am leaving my forest and my dolls and my torture chamber and my monkey music box, Daroga," he half-sang. "She will not send the wedding invitation, I know it. Ah but I bet she enjoyed it . . . you know . . . it? You must know what I hint at, Daroga. Such fun it was, I almost died of it. A 'vivacous young' garcon like me, but you see it was my first time! I really was amazed, _she touched my bare skin! Mine! Yes!"_ He burst into a new and louder fit of snickers which made the others, including this new intruder with the foreign dialect, fall silent once again, for then his laughter became long, protracted, soft moans, and it was, shamefully, almost as mesmerizing to hear as it was awful.

"The coast is clear, then, upstairs?" The old dame queried stiltedly, trying to move the subject and the fugitive upward.

"Yes, for now. Parisian police don't hold a candle to my native officers. No original sense of hunting instinct," Nadir purred, then he moved down and slipped something cold and circular around Erik's trembling pinky finger. "I think it might do you more harm to lose this."

The Phantom of the Opera's underbreath prattling ceased. He actually moved then, cocking his head giddily in the darkness, panting with inexplicable, silent laughter. Finally he acknowledged the contact between his finger and the object. "Oh, the ring, the ring, yes, she gave it back did she not, when she left me for _him_? I left it down in my hell-pit on purpose, Daroga. And the monkey. Yes, the monkey."

"But you might want the ring, Erik. You really never know. I wish you good luck, old . . . .friend." Another swoosh of air, at which point Nadir deposited something in Meg's arms as well, and then the man whom the entire Opera Populaire knew only as the Persian was gone.

Erik did not hesitate. He ripped the ring off his pinky finger and flung it down into the abyss with another soft, mangled cry. Meg whimpered and clutched him tighter. "You will never find it now, monsieur," she murmered.

"Then I must go and fetch it," Erik flung back, and burst into sniggers.

"No you must _not_," the older woman's voice snapped, and the laughter stopped.

At last the Opera Ghost tore free of the little ballet dancer, still clutching himself, making welts in his clavicle with his own fingertips. "Antoinette!" he barked, again hiding agony with fury—addressing the older woman, the guide with the sleeves like bat wings. "_Why _are you _doing _this? _I want to die!_" And he could not, then, restrain a real sob.

A sharp breath inhaled. Madame Antionette Giry, his sole loyal advocate, was considering speaking. In the end, she remained mute.

And after that, there was no more conversation, but he felt himself helplessly dragged forward and upward by two pairs of hands, one cold and pruned, the other soft and warm and tender, icy drafts behind beckoning him ever in ascension. And Erik wept in silence the whole way. For he was being expelled from his womb.

"Ayesha," he began feebly, one final attempt at an excuse to descend back to the blackness, to the distant roar of gendarmes and stage crews and chorus singers come to avenge Piangi and Buquet: to suicide.

"Here, I have her here, Nadir gave her to me," came Meg Giry's prompt, timidly compassionate tone once more, and in the blind night Erik felt something warm and soft and ticklish brush against his bare chest, and heard a soft wailing mew, and his hands grappled to take hold of his only real love in the world. "You should hold onto her, I think," the young dancer breathed, with a gentle nurturance, an immediate understanding, which made him at once hideously sorry for his volatility towards her.

"I think I will," he muttered brokenly back, using compliance as an apology, cradling his little cat to his sewer-caked open shirt.

Still they ascended.

Then Erik stopped altogether. ". . . My mask?"

"It is gone, Erik," Antoinette Giry's more incisive tone rang backwards at him, echoing all around, and suddenly he realized how others must feel when at victim to his ventriloquist tricks over the years. The only difference was that Madame Giry was not so cruel as to employ such tactics deliberately. Cruelty was reserved for monsters, unlovable monsters, like him. "Forget it, you hear me? Just keep going."

"I will not let anyone else see me unmasked," he pressed, in a tone bordering, now, on frenzy. He stood firmly planted on one of the ancient, crumbling stone steps of the catacombs, like a two year old exhausted and simply bereft of one too many comforts….only somehow far more tragic, and far less trivial, than that. "_I will not, you hear me?" _His long, slender fingers balled into fists.

"I thought you didn't care anymore," the ballet mistress coolly retorted, as though he were in fact one of her obstinate pupils throwing a tantrum, and she was determined to maintain the upper hand. "That's why you uncovered all your mirrors."

"And then I _broke_ them! As I would like to break myself! _But you won't let me alone!"_

"No," she snapped, forgetting her fear, forgetting his capacity to kill . . . or perhaps just bravely disregarding it. " I will not. Erik, _I love you_, for God's Sake. Perhaps it's not so dreadfully obvious, but I do all the same. I won't let you just throw your soul into the Seine. I have found you a new home: A new, life, Erik! See? _I love you_. Get up here now."

A long silence. And then it was the Opera Ghost's turn to fall mute.

This time it was for good—For he was afraid to ask his next question:

_Do you mean that?_

And so he ascended.


	2. Enter the Swan

**Of Stone: **

**Chapter 2: Enter the Swan**

A Phantom of the Opera fanfiction

By AmberPalette (Amber Carroll Stitt)

I do not own the Phantom of the Opera or any of its original characters; this is the unique achievement of Andrew Lloyd Webber and foremost of Gaston Leroux. I DO however own the fan created characters Odette D'Anastaise and Gabrie as well as the various random nuns…you'll see, hehe…well you'll figure out his last name in time. 

_For a more detailed disclaimer, see the prologue chapter, but suffice to say here, I mix canons quite liberally and you will see the influences of the film, musical, and books by Leroux and Susan Kay in my series. I do not take sides on Raoul or Erik, although Erik is my favorite character, and at the moment I base Erik most heavily on a mixture of the Gerard Butler and Michael Crawford depictions. If you do not appreciate the film or musical versions of the canon story, then this may not be for you and I respectfully request a withdrawal from childish flaming. Thanks. BIG SMILES and ENJOY!_

**Paris, 1919**

Empty.

Cold. He has always thought of dying as one long unendurable coldness, like lying naked and dragged through a snowy crystalline tunnel . . . Like the drizzling rain turned snow falling all over the City of Lights tonight . . .

But now Charles de Chagny, son of Raoul de Chagny, is convinced that it is grief in life, and not death, that bears with it such misery. To go on enduring the world bereft of the person who made it bearable. But his mother has gone to heaven and to eternal warmth, and to her father, to sing while he plays his violin, to make the angels weep for envy. She is happy and so her eldest son must not resign to the despair which claws at him, and at his little brother and sister, and his father and their friends.

He stares at her grave for a very long time. A magnificent monument, of marble, with an ovular portrait of her lovely face in the peak.

_Christine: the Countess of Chagny. Beloved wife and mother._

So damned insufficient a description. But words never can make up for the experience of a soft touch, a loving voice raised in song over the needlepoint or at the glorious heartstopping concert, the smell of soap and lavender water and the kiss on a childhood brow. When these things are gone, they are simply gone.

There is the sound of feet crunching in the swiftly accumulating snow. The Vicomte de Chagny's son looks up from the grave and sees another man his age, and somehow strangely familiar. The man is lean and firmly built and tall, with short, neatly-cropped ebony hair and eyes as bright as polished azure. Charles de Chagny frowns, for the sight of the man, about two or three years his junior, reminds him of his late mother's incessant nervous quips about his own eye color, that she could not imagine where it came from, considering neither she nor Raoul ever had such eyes. Must be Grandpapa Daae's eyes, she had always said with a tight giggle, and he had always felt confused, for in the old photographs he had seen of his Swedish grandfather showed a kindly but dark eyed man. Now he feels only grief and pain at her memory, so fresh, in only a month's passing, is her death. He knows no one suffers as his father does; he knows his father must be alone with his mother in this place of peace, and that he must come in to fellowship with her angel in advance. Father is away at some sort of auction at the moment, at that old run down Opera Populaire that is being renovated and surged full of electricity. They say they are even going to add electric lights to one of the old chandeliers, the big one that fell a little less than a year before he was born . . .

Presently the younger man approaches with a smile that is almost lupine, but the slightly feral nature of it is more charming than unsettling. "I am sorry," he says gently, and even in its softness, the voice resonates in the clear chill air. "I have to present something to your mother's grave. My name is Gabriel. My father, you see . . . who wishes to remain anonymous. . . he is very old and weak but he was very insistent that I come. He knew your mother very well . . . they were very close . . . friends, I think." Here the raven-haired youth pauses to scowl in puzzlement, as though he has not quite grappled with the correct words for the relationship he is trying to describe. He looks, in fact, like a doctor breaking bittersweet news to a hospital patient, or perhaps the chaplain who comes in and prays gravely over that patient's well-being.

This further puzzles Charles, who shakes the trespasser's free hand and emits an absent-minded, desolate, "Ah, I see. It is a pleasure to meet the son of my mother's friend."

The gently compelling Gabriel shrugs and gives a relieved little chuckle. "Ah, _merci._ Papa and I always play around at his great gilt organ, M. de Chagney, but you see, he refused to sing or play today until I delivered this. He hopes to come out a bit later, with my assistance, should you still be here. But for now . . . please do forgive my intrusion."

At this point the man draws a perfect red rose tied with a black satin ribbon and encircled by a dazzling diamond ring from under his black opera cloak. He places it on Christine de Chagny's grave, bows to it, and crosses himself. To Charles's astonishment, as though performing a sacrament, this Gabriel begins to softly sing a haunting melody, and the Vicomte's son catches bits and pieces, the gist of which seems to have something to do with "music of night."

And at once he recognizes the piece. "My mother often sang that when I was a little boy," he hoarsely interrupts, his face twisted in grief. "To this day I play it on my grandfather's violin." His vision is blurred. "Who are you? And who is this man that sent you?"

The fair-skinned, dark-haired youth who so disturbingly resembles . . . him . . . stands, then, brushing snow off his knees, and smiles at him—the smile of the first face one sees coming into a warm cottage after a long trek in the snow, the smile of home and unbidden charity. Then this strange angel of a man disregards the questions, his pure and shining eyes kind, indeed almost unearthly. "Thank you for telling me that, Charles." Now as he speaks, the power of Gabriel's tenor becomes apparent. He rests a black-gloved hand on Charles's quivering shoulder. " . . . Our father will be most consoled to know that."

Silence.

Comprehension.

Or perhaps further confusion. But something pops, jolts, sparks between them as the sentence is uttered by the intruder. One word does it. One very common word.

Charles feels it. ". . . _Our_ father?"

More silence.

Then acceptance.

For Gabriel sighs contentedly, as though a daunting task has been overcome. "Did your mother never mention the angel of music?" He breathes a laugh.

Charles frowns. "There were many lullabies and bedtime stories of such a being. . . a sort of guardian angel over me always, she said, even when she and father were sick or away . . . there was a time when I was little and a carriage almost ran me over and a man all in black saved me, and . . . and vanished . . . but . . ." Charles reddens, embarrassed at so openly blathering at this stranger. "Look here, I don't understand your meaning!"

Gabriel's smile is unwavering. "Never mind. Only spend a long and happy life, monsieur. Have children, and continue to play your violin, and to cherish your mama's memory. Know that doing these things will make an old man named Erik very happy indeed."

Charles glares at his feet, controlling the tears that spring once again to his eyes. "But, monsieur, I must ask . . ." He looks up, determined to discuss the matter of this "angel of music". . .

But the young angel named Gabriel is already gone, the fast-falling snow covering whatever tracks he may have made. All that remains is the rose, and the black satin ribbon, and the ring that disconcertingly resembles an engagement or wedding token: on his mother's grave. A seemingly benevolent gesture of affection from an old "friend." Yet . . .

He grunts softly, bending, somehow feeling a strange urge to discard the gift, as if somehow it encroaches on territory that belongs to his father . . . his father . . .

_Our father?_ _Erik?_

_Who is Erik?_

A sharp gust of wind plunges him into the darkness of his cloak as it flings up over his eyes.

Then on the wind there is a woman's voice. "Charles?" A delicate middle-aged woman, her blond hair pulled into a dainty upward coiffure, her eyes red from weeping, appears. She takes his arm. It is Meg Giry, his mother's oldest friend. She smiles at him, the strong enduring smile of sorrow borne in grace, and holds him against her, a surrogate mother already. Then he feels her stiffen; she is looking at the bizarre gift on his mother's grave. "Who brought that?" she asks, utterly mystified.

"His name is Gabriel. He said . . . he said it was from his father . . . a man named Erik."

The lady's eyes soften and so does her smile. "Don't move it. Let it be. Believe me when I say that there could be no greater token of love bestowed upon the memory of any woman who ever lived."

Charles nods numbly. A pang of hesitation, then he probes, "You know him then, this . . . Erik. His son said something peculiar . . . he called him 'our father.' Our father, Meg . . . is that not odd?" His eyes dig into hers, scouring for meaning.

Her face is as placid as a lake on a still summer evening. With much churning beneath the surface. "Perhaps he was referring to his other siblings, Charles. You're not the only man in Paris who is not an only child." She laughs tenderly, then, turns, and makes her way for her carriage, near his, on the road.

Charles sighs with a strange, sudden relief. "Of course, of course," he breathes, following her.

He glances backward at the rose and ring, but once. The petals and stem of the bloom, shivering in the winter wind, seem to lovingly caress the cold stone monument, to give it companionship, and color, and life. He decides that he is very fond of the gift, and of the man who sent it, whomever he may be. Perhaps one day he will resolve to visit this old musician who so cherished his mother in life and who honors her in death.

And then, with a small sigh, and a prayer to God and to his mother in heaven, whose grave has been so graced, he leaves the cemetery.

An hour later, clutching the carved papier mache monkey music box crafted by the hands of the specter that forever haunted the love he shared with his late wife, Raoul de Chagny turns his wheelchair in the direction of his beloved Christine's grave.

He arrives, resigning to her spirit, showing her his love is so great that he would even acknowledge the love another man bore her, so happy had the memory of Erik the Phantom of the Opera made her.

Raoul pales then, his old and cloudy eyes fixed on the rose, and the diamond ring, that precede his gift. "Bravo," he whispers, "bravo, angel of music. And she loved us both, I suppose." And then he, too, smiles.

**Paris, 1872**

_'It's just been too long'  
Is what they're saying  
I show them my mask  
And they don't know  
How it's stuck in my head  
and it just won't go away  
I miss it so much. _

How did it come to be?  
I'm living with remains of me,  
and in this loneliness I'll see  
I could leave you alone.

Now what they say  
is 'just stay away'  
Mask in my hands,  
now they all know  
the closer I get,  
The more I'm pushed away  
I want it so much.

_How did it come to be?  
I'm living with remains of me  
and in this loneliness I'm gonna show you  
How I could leave you.  
To love you, to need you  
To take you down.  
I love you. _

Now that it's all been seen  
There's no one left for me to be,  
and in this honesty you'll see  
I won't leave you.  
To love you, to need you  
to take you down  
I love you...I fucking love you  
I love you  
I'll never never leave you alone."

"Strangled" by Snake River Conspiracy

_"Raoul, I've been there—to his world of unending night_

_To a world where the daylight dissolves into darkness_

_. . . That face so distorted, deformed, it was hardly a face_

_In that darkness, darkness . . . _

_But his voice filled my spirit with a strange, sweet sound_

_In that night, there was music in my mind _

_And through music my soul began to soar!_

_And I heard as I'd never heard before . . ._

_Yet in his eyes, all the sadness of the world_

_Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore."_

_--Christine, from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera"_

Once dwelling in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, now the ghost lingered beneath a convent, a holy orphanage of sorts for those blessed enough to find its sheltering arms. He had been here for two years, since the Parisian mob followed him to his den, since _She_ blessed him with but one kiss and then left him, and he too was forced to flee his dark sanctuary, to smash every mirror that tormented him with his face, his face, his face, his sole inescapable crime. . .

He was led to a new cavern, a new black, subterranean, perpetual descent towards the grave, by his sole friend, Antoinette Giry . . . and now his age, and his voice in ceaseless musical tribute to his private solitude and anguish, were the only things that climbed rather than sank…what did it matter anyway? Song did not matter when there were no ears to appreciate it, no hearts to stop in its rapture . . . . there was no Christine Daee for that now . . . . and age did not matter when death was a most welcome event.

Perhaps today would be the day. He might almost pray for it were he not so assured of his place in hell . . . "Angel of Hell." That is what they, the Misunderstanding, the Callous, called him, how they hissed for his blood as he fled their rage and their vengeance, is it not?

No, a thousand pardons. It was "Angel of Darkness." Yes, that was it.

He grew to find solace in his deep dark void, just as in his last home….a cavern like the warm glow of a fire through frosted glass…decorated with innumerable flickering candelabras and half-illuminated plaster molds, as well as flourishes of paper, crumpled or freeflowing, all scrawled upon in the dense black ink of music-making staffs, cleff notes, accidental signs…a coffin that posed as a bed….and his many now-broken mirrors, all uncovered, all sneering and jagged.

Presently, the self-exiled Angel slumped over his glistening, smooth black organ, in only a crisp white nightshirt, black silk pants, and long black robe, fallen asleep against the keys, his slicked raven hair tumbling down over his face.

But peace was not long earned; the pressure of his head upon the keys created an unseemly squawk from the pipes, stirring him from his coma. His eyes snapped open: a feverish, terrifyingly hungry blue. They darted about, taking in the environment, until at last he realized that his wakening was not due to any living voice or hand.

Oh, secretly he wished it had been a woman's touch….he might, just might, welcome even _Her_ touch. He had almost pushed _Her, _the ever-present and all-consuming_ Her, _from his soul now, but she still unwittingly taunted him with her sweetness and her kindness in his dreams . . . taunted him because they were so much warmer than when he awakened. Christine, Christine, the way her skin dimpled with a smile, how that left side of her rose-cream lips curled a bit higher than the right and the way her chocolate brown eyes widened both innocently and intelligently at the smallest shock and she cocked her head and jotted her neck to rid dark curls from her eyes . . . Christine with all her adorable, venerable, _worshipable_ quirks. Christine for whom he would and _did _kill. Christine whom he thought would cast the love upon him that he never earned from his own mother . . . Christine to whom Erik the Phantom of the Opera _never once_ meant such cruelty . . . Christine to whom he always somehow ended up imparting terrifyingly unbridled spite, always, at least, after Raoul de Chagny, after she roused herself from the façade and the reverie of Erik's charade as her late father's guardian angel.

Christine, only a vulnerable girl, only a grieving human being herself, in whom he, a multiply scarred beast, had invested far too much. Unfairly. Even _he_, in all his dementia and love of darkness, could see that now.

Now.

_Oh, Christine, could you not realize that I did it, that I shamelessly deceived you, because I never once dreamed you might have accepted the mere broken man, the whipped and beaten and tucked away garbage of gypsies? _

_Because I only knew capacity of others to love my voice, not _me

_Did you never now I realized it was wicked of me, but was so desperately afraid of any other course of action. . . ? Oh Christine, for five more minutes to tell you this clearly, with no petty anger or jealous frenzy in my way . . . _

But it was only his obsession, his constant comfort and tormentor, his music, again. He rose from his seat in a graceful, almost menacingly fluid motion, smoothing back his hair, revealing the cause of its uneven growth: While the left side of his face was breathtakingly handsome, almost beautiful in an ethereal, pale, seraphim way…. the entire right side of his face, a deformity from birth, was burnt a dull red, twisted and gnarled as though the skin has been pulled in a counter-clockwise direction. It was not as hideous looking as the cruel encounters in his life had taught him to think it was, but juxtaposed with the beauty of the "good side," as he had bitterly deemed it, it was disconcerting . . .

Primarily because he took such unnecessarily painstaking efforts to hide it, and the human psyche produced more suspense when one wondered what horrid truths might lie behind the proverbial mask.

The Phantom stretched his slender body and cracked the knuckles of his long, elegant hands, sliding through the darkness to his coffin, staring at the fire-charred, unfinished porcelain mask sitting on the pillow. He remembered sending Meg Giry, poor child, with all her enthusiastic innocence, back to fetch it from the Opera Populaire. He remembered more vividly taking it and suddenly being afraid to put it back on his exposed flesh.

He had not worn it in the whole two years of his confinement in this new home: He had not left this catacomb since convicted a murderer and sent to hiding….but still . . . something told him he would have a visitor or two tonight. Something that almost frightened him….he, the one who was used to doing the frightening. He shook his head at his own foolish imagination, resolved himself to be used to his cold cocoon, and sat back down at the organ, singing aimless notes and scales in an exquisite tenor . . . slowly calming down.

Oh, too true: He had not been able to compose anything substantial in over two years, not since _Don Juan Triumphant, _which it itself was not as much music as the last anguished ode to his unrequited love, his soul's eulogy. But still, still, he could make that throat of his vibrate with the ever-asserted existence of music, even if that music had been reduced to a jarbled and mad giggle of notes chasing their treble cleff.

'_Fear can turn to love—you'll learn to see, to find the man behind the monster, this…repulsive carcass, who seems a beast but secretly dreams of beauty, secretly…secretly…'_

_--Erik, from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera"_

She did not know anything in that moment but the sheer agony on her flesh. In that moment dragged from her house by a great swarthy man that smelled overpoweringly of garlic and sweat, after the foolishness of opening her door to him . . . for she was well near deaf, and could not hear what he was really saying when he came simpering on her doorstep, in the guise of one ill and in need of shelter. It was not the way he had barged in and broke all kinds of things inside her tiny Montmartre flat, trampling on the shards of lamps glass and flinging the silver into pockets, into a grimy bag, into his belt . . .

None of that or her rage or fear matched the pain she felt moments later when he found the acid bottles in the drawer of her landlord, a retired, or rather, disgraced, chemistry professor, and flung them all over her. She had called him a pig, whoever he was, for so brutalizing her property, and had paid for it by feeling the sizzling stinking broiling of acid on her chest, on one of her breasts, on her stomach and legs.

Then, having stolen all he needed, the burglar had thrown a match into her house, where her memories of her late parents lay in all manner of photographs and diaries, and set it afire, and dragged her out into the snow, mad with drink, from his wild boar-like eyes, and hiked up her skirts, and torn down his grimy trousers to rape her, while she shrieked and fought with all that was in his agonized form, kicking, clawing, snarling herself, knowing herself to be innocent and undeserving of such a crime . . .

For an instant, the beast closed in and nearly won the battle against the woman warrior named Odette d'Anastaise, but at last the few spare gendarmes of the absinthe-drenched Montmartre came roaring and whistling down the street, tearing the cruel creature from the lady. Odette lay weeping and moaning, her clothing shredded and her hideous vitriol scars revealed. She rolled on her stomach and cooled the fire on her skin with the snow, moved a bit in the dirty whiteness and saw red, and gasped, and then gagged.

Tied to the strings of her skirts, apparently a habit for sign of the wear on the ribbons that adhered them, was a pair of tattered child's ballet shoes; they slipped off in her fit of nausea and one of the gendarmes picked them up for her. "Yours?" he queried. She did not answer because she saw his lips move as he bent over her, but she could not hear him. She could not hear anyone. It had been her ruin for years. Tears exploded down her cheeks like a deluge and she dry heaved some more.

A younger gendarme tossed his waistcoat over her and with the aid of another, carried her away from the scene, from the inferno that had been her flat, from the dark alley where she had nearly been violated past imagining. Her wronger was carried off screaming into the night, his trousers still down and incriminating him, while whores and their patrons leaned drunkenly out brothel windows and giggled and waved half-drunk wine bottles at the man, so commonplace was the crime to them. Odette never saw the beast, the boar-eyed monster, again, but she didn't need to: The scars, skin and spiritual, still seared. And she had last what little in lift she still possessed. She had died, she was sure of it.

Consciousness left her for blackness at many intervals as she was carried down the snowy streets, partly because her deafness made it difficult to hear the soothing words of the police officers, or their conversation. She made out one question, apparently reiterated for its almost impatient loudness: "Who in Paris do you know that can help you?"

Odette raked her ravaged mind for childhood friends and mentors, and could think only of her ballet mistress, a dear friend of her late mother's, one Antoinette Giry. There was a daughter named Meg, too, she thought she heard herself murmer, my age. She supplied the woman's name and the parts of the address that she could remember. Then she gave way to the inkiness of sleep utterly.

There were times of lucidity: An old woman's taut face, her eyes with alarm and compassion—yes, the face was vaguely familiar, and she thought she heard her name; then the clip clop of a horse's hooves and some sort of interior warmth, like a seat; then silence and hushed voices of many women . . . then she was being carried by many elderly women in crisp clean robes and she wasn't sure if this was a hospital or heaven. She asked. Neither, the woman with the oldest and kindest face spoke gently but clearly back, just a convent in the heart of Paris. A Mme Giry had supplied some clean clothes and the request for sanctuary inside the convent walls until Odette had recovered from her shock—indeed, until she could find another home, in light of the demolishment of her current residence. Mme Giry and her daughter Meg would come by to visit in the morning.

Odette nodded, and wept, and nodded some more, far too many nods for an appropriate and simple "yes" or "thank you" response—she felt herself slipping past the point of hysteria and harshly willed herself to stop, so controlling was she, usually, of her emotions. She was carried into a small, warmly-lit, plain bedroom with a crucifix mounted on the wall above the bed and a small austere piano on the opposite side . . .

There were two curiosities presented immediately to the mind of young and bereaved Odette d'Anastaise:

The first was that there was a curious crack in the floorboards directly under it. The second was that there was a man sitting at it. She was horrified and transfixed all at once by this intrusion.

He was hard to make out in the shadow cast over the instrument, partially because everything from his hair down to his cloak and trousers was a deep abysmal jet black, but primarily because he had his back to them all and was playing the most sonorous and exquisite rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata that Odette had ever, in her many years of Classical training in stage performance, heard. Despite her agony, and her exhaustion, and her devastation, she gasped with something like pleasure at the sound. For she not only loved what she heard, but she COULD hear it. And that was . . .

That was a miracle.

She gasped again, louder, while the nuns all but swaddled her in warm clean blankets in her bed and a doctor whom Mme. Giry had apparently also called tended to her gruesome bodily burns.

The dark man turned at the sound. His face was very difficult to see, and in her destroyed senses she almost thought half his face was utterly obstructed, as though by a mask or fabric of some sort. But she saw his eyes, pale like the sheen of the moon on a dark lake, and they were less than joyful. In fact, they seemed to mirror the misery she felt. He watched her for an eternal moment. She found it oddly soothing. Then his eyes narrowed, and she chilled under her sheets.

"_Erik_," the Abbess spoke the encroacher's apparent name as though she knew him well, and Odette could hear bits and pieces, something about "the new resident," and "heed that you cannot lurk about in the convent's empty chambers uninvited," and "have patience with the girl, she is hurt."

The mysterious specter nodded once, sharply, and rose to his feet like an agitated bird of prey, slamming down the piano cover, tossing a defiant glare at Odette, as though she for all the world were the intruder and he the resident disturbed by her entry, rather than the opposite. Then she saw his lips move in the darkness, perhaps some sort of empty condolence, watched him stare her over once more, and bow deeply. Then he turned and stalked out of the room, and she did not see him again before the doctor gave her scars an impossible to heal prognosis and she fell into a fitful and desolate sleep.

She woke in the morning to a metallic taste in her mouth, a parched throat, an aching body…

And repaired ballet slippers.

Odette blinked and sat up straighter, taking in the ovular oak beside table and the sleek dusty rose shoes, perfectly reupholstered and shining new. Only master hands could have re-crafted them so thoroughly, so delicately and sensitively; her mind was shattered with the act of kindness and her inability to thank the benefactor, who had, by the lack of name attached to the gift, preferred anonymity.

Those slippers were only last night a tattered heap she kept tied to her petticoat strings as a reminder of a much lost time of innocence and opportunity: her childhood training for the Opera Populaire's famed ballet line, a company rivaled only by their Russian peers. Her mother had, after all, named her after the protagonist of Tchaikovsky's most famous ballet, _Swan Lake._ Yet….With the opera house in disarray and mismanagement for the past two years, and her own personal circumstances and capacity to dance wrecked by…creeping, chilly, slimy dark memories she preferred to leave sunken beneath the calm surface of her psyche….she still had clung to those twin tokens of hope, despite their smallness and wear upon her now useless feet. But now …whose opinion was it that she put them back on again? Whose brazen, interfering…altruistic, optimistic opinion?

Odette scowled, ire raising in her belly like a wild flame, confusion and rage, for she hated to be patronized, or excessively directed, despite any kindness in the director's intentions. She shook her head, her waving ebony tumbles of hair brushing her shoulders and waist. A long tuft crossed her olive cheek and rested there like a wild mane, but she swished it hastily from her eyes when she spotted the object that sat next to the slippers. It had fallen from the bedstand when she had reached to pick up and caress her repaired slippers. She leaned over the bed, gingerly, for she still ached and blistered, and reached the object, lifting it up into her arms with a sharp gasp.

Apparently her benefactor knew her name, and its significance.

For the gift accompanying her slippers was an exquisite hand-carved white swan. There was a lovingness to the detail of its tiny black eye-markings and the curvature of its neck that, somehow, made her eyes suddenly flood brilliantly with tears. There was a note attached in almost savagely loopy red ink:

_"Mademoiselle Odette: Worn shoes are the blessing of the ballet mistress who has drive and passion. Wear these out again, in return for their repair. For if you stop, then your wronger has won. Dance until your feet go numb. I would reveal myself, but you have no need of it, or of my company, I assure you. Know only that someone understands. Someone cares. Your obedient, C.G."_

Odette's hand flew over her mouth and stifled a sob of fury, grief, and at last thankfulness. "My God," she whispered aloud, "what caring angel has graced me in this hour of desperate loss?" Oh God, how alone she suddenly felt, how in need to see this mysterious person. How deprived of her common sense, and her livelihood, and how very abandoned. The room hummed and blurred before her and all she could see was her attacker's face, and all she could think on was replacing it with the face of this giving stranger. _C.G.?_ What on earth…?

Then she heard it: A scurrying noise, like both the scuttling of batwings and the billow of an underground draft of wind. She shuddered, for it had indeed grown icily cold and windy inside her hidden little convent dormitory. Her eyes snapped to the floorboard that she had noticed unhinged and she saw a flicker of iridescent black. Then whomever or whatever had been watching her reaction was gone.

She shivered, feeling violated all over again, and struggled to her feet, calling for assistance. This matter was to be resolved this instant, burns or no burns.

A couple of stout, prune-faced nuns waddled into her room cooing over her like twin matriarchs giving out candy to their favorite niece. She smiled tightly and nodded her thanks to the blessings they showered on her—blessings she could barely hear, of course, with her deafness—and tersely demanded that the great heavy piano be pulled over on top of the loose floorboard.

The nuns were very puzzled but called in many other sisters, who immediately obliged. Odette breathed again the moment the makeshift peephole was rendered impotent by the density and weight of the piano. She returned to bed and slept, but her dreams were fitful, and mingled rainclouds that poured oil of vitriol with the carved swan, which came to life before her, and danced in her newly repaired slippers, to the a haunting and mournful, yet somehow penetratingly soothing, male tenor wafting in her ears.

Days passed and Odette's mind continued to drift to her intruder and to her benefactor, whom she disconcertingly began to mingle in her thoughts. She dared to think the unthinkable: that it could be one and the same person. Impudent parts of her personality, coupled with having little else to lose, gave her a craving for a confrontation. And so one night her feet found themselves inside, of all impractical things, her ballet slippers, and she was out in the still, peaceful sparse halls of the convent, seeking the lowest level of the building: an old, unused wine cellar. Her only companions were the flickering candelabras in the long expanses of stone, as well as her own fitful shadow.

After wasting hours of fumbling about in her new home, Odette found a room near the center of the convent, dusty with lack of use, and clambered down the molded wooden ladder and into the dark, musty space for which she had been searching, and the same billow of cold air smacked her cheeks and flung her black mane of hair from her face. Wetness clung to her delicate bare ankles and she reached down quickly and scratched imaginary leeches from them. She felt the color in her skin draining to white, for there was a huge, yawning hole in the back of the bare cellar, and by the direction of the draft, it could only have led downward to the Parisian catacombs. And there was something even more terrifying about it: A person was standing in the passageway, swathed in black, and almost totally obscured by the darkness. Stone-still. And somehow _very_ familiar.

Odette slowly straightened back to a standing position. Human curiosity and animal instinct clashed within her. Ultimately, the desire to study her unexpected companion forcefully stuffed the impulse to dash into the opposite direction into some dark nook of her mind. She was fascinated.

It was a man, little older than forty, she guessed, though she had no way of being certain in the shadows.

He was tall and slender, as though his contours had been whisked on a painter's canvas with one narrow but decisive, inky black stroke. To his thinness there was indeed unquenchable energy and an enigmatic but potent presence—a power like distant thunder, like a dark warning embodied. When she could bring herself to lift her eyes from his black-cloaked frame, she drew a soft gasp at his face—schismed down the center by an unfinished porcelain mask, cold and immaculate and expressionless as an icecap over a lake. It was not even this peculiar adornment that took her aback, as much as the face itself: The half of it that she _could _see was pale and exquisitely…handsome? No, more like _beautiful_. Like ivory. Like the highest, softest, sweetest note of an opera as it lingers at the top of a scale just before the listener, with an elated heart that begins to sink, realizes that the song is almost over and the beauty almost spent. Yes, an evanescent face, a martyr's, a ghost's, and neatly framed by lush, raven black hair.

But this intruder was no ghost, because of his eyes: In them lay the most arresting aspect of his being. They were _too _alive: A bright steel blue that somehow was capable of both frost and blistering, electrical heat. Restless light crackled in his irises, expressing a pledge to cling to the private misery of existence if only to spite the world that apparently, by the tight clench of his jaw and the gracefully suspicious, liquid crouching and arching movements of his spine, despised him.

Bitterness: God, he was beauty contaminated by bitterness.

And then he spoke, and she discovered that no sense of awe she had yet felt stood in comparison to her shock and reverence now. It was a voice like dark golden honey . . . yet an enunciated hiss, a schoolteacher's upbraiding or a snake's sneer before the strike. . . yet a purring seduction . . . from everywhere and yet distinctly from his own disapprovingly pursed lips. His bright white teeth and dark eyebrows reminded her more of some black fox or alley cat than a human.

"I wasn't staring at you _indecently_, you know, up in your room. I'm not _that _kind of man. Yet the lady is shocked, I see," he cooed contemptuously.

And it was then that Odette realized she had been staring at him for over five minutes without courteous interruption. She gasped. "Oh, Monsieur, I…I don't know . . . how I can hear you." She frowned, suddenly taken aback by her realization that somehow he was as audible to her as if she had no affliction of partial deafness. "I have lost a good deal of my hearing, you see . . .an . . . accident a year or so ago . . . " Vaguely, entranced, she pointed at her ears, stiffly letting her arms return to her sides when she discerned comprehension in his swiftly changing facial expression. She was stunned to see genuine, though cautiously understated, pity in his gaze. He was clearly careful with his emotions, kind or otherwise.

"You are deaf?" His lips perfectly formed the words, but his voice must have retreated to a quieter range, for she had lost the capacity to hear it. She saw vastly understated but pure anguish in his eyes. For _her?_ "I am most . . .sorry to hear that, Mademoiselle. . . You _are_ Odette, are you not?"

Somehow the inability to hear that mystifying, thrilling tenor profoundly afflicted her, and she was embarrassed to feel actual tears of frustration in her eyes as this stranger with the mask and the voice like an instrument of God beheld her with his quiet, gentle longsuffering. "Yes, Odette is my name. Please," she barely heard herself gasp, "speak _up_, Monsieur. I really could hear you a moment ago. I don't know how, but it . . . it was . . . _please _speak up."

He started violently and seemed to catch himself exhibiting such a benevolent expression to a stranger. A mixture of keen pleasure and alarm filled that exquisite face, and he stepped back a pace, though his torso leaned towards her, a gesture of intrigue and ambivalent longing. "You _like_ the sound of my voice, do you?"

Immediately she heard him again, and whatever shocked or pleased look her face now sported caused him to actually smile. It must have been a rarely practiced gesture, because it was slightly lopsided and far more candid and unbridled than his previous expressions and gestures. Oh, but it was beautiful, like the rest of him. Not quite tame, not quite earthly. Odette smiled too, reveling in this, vaguely aware of her stupidity when she should be running from such a peculiar person alone in the darkness. After all, this was not a ghost or a devil but a man, and men, she knew from experience, could be far more sordid and dangerous and cruel than any creature of hell. The scars hidden beneath her dress ached with the memory of this.

Again the masked man caught himself being too emotionally demonstrative, and frowned fiercely at his own apparent lack of restraint with his unlikely intruder. "You should be more careful, you know . . . Odette. I could be a murderer."

How had he violated her very thoughts? There was smugness in his words and in his wildly bright eyes that made her flesh squirm. The awe of the moment was now most definitely past.

"You are right, Monsieur . . . whomever you are . . ." she began, inching backward, tightly clutching the rosary that one of the sisters had given her when she had first arrived at their convent.

"Erik. Erik is my name," he rather blurted it, and once again scowled at himself, as though he had never intended to be so openly informative. _Ah, the man from her first night at the convent, who had been so fascinated with the piano in her room_. Oddly, a surname did not follow. It seemed he had at last harnessed his self-restraint, producing a cool and stony effect in the revealed half of his visage.

"Monsieur . . . Erik . . . do pardon my intrusion. I should in fact go."

He loomed towards her and her heart vaulted into her throat. But his words were calmly cordial. "No such intrusion, really. I have not seen someone react so . . . _pleasantly_ . . . to the sound of my voice in over two years. _Merci_, Mlle Odette . . . "

"I . . .see. Well." She continued to back up the staircase. He was groping for a surname, too, she knew, but she was hardly going to relinquish hers, either.

"Well," he echoed with another unintended and slightly puckish grin, watching her.

Pointedly, he halted where the cool light of the upstairs wine cellar began, as though the feel of anything but night against his pale skin might actually hurt. Perhaps she had met a vampire. No, foolish. No such hellish demon would have looked at her with such real compassion when she admitted the affliction of her ears. But still . . .

She realized she was simply staring at him again, that her movement had ceased precisely when his had.

The mysterious M. Erik bowed at the waist, as though, in the manner of some prim, harsh governess, to prompt the slightly daft child in the front row of class that it was time to scurry out of her desk and towards her _maison_. His tone was concordantly cool and vaguely amused. "_A bientot_, Mlle Odette." Ruminative crinkles formed under his sparkling eyes . . . the resultant expression of which not _quite _sadistic, but disconcertingly . . . .scheming.

She could not tell if he was really pondering something about her manner or countenance or if it was merely another of his oddly potent tools of psychological persuasion. Either way, it was a bit intimidating. She felt reduced from a woman to an amoeba, and from her nervousness came a smidgen of indignation. She inhaled sharply, face reddening in the darkness with her resentment, suddenly feeling the need to stand her ground.

"Do come again," the prowler tacitly continued. Was that sarcasm? And then, more forcefully, when she found herself once again arrested by the clarity of his voice in her ears, he waved a black leather gloved hand at her and barked, "Go _on_, then!"

Odette jumped at the new impatient strength in his voice. Recovering, she nearly scoffed at such a brazen gesture. This eccentric fellow had best not wait _too _long for her return, or it would make for a lonely and dull vigil! "Of course, Monsieur," she retorted flatly, turning on her heel and continuing up the steps, utterly terrified but certainly not willing to offer him the satisfaction of a backward glance.

What most startled, and, ultimately, irritated her was her masked stranger's deliberately audible laughter, chasing her all the way up the steps, ceasing only when she had emerged fully into the light: laughter that was neither condescending nor cruel, but, in some bizarrely familiar way . . . affectionate.

Two weeks passed and Odette vowed never to return unescorted to the catacombs beneath the convent wine cellar. She breathlessly pursued the abbess and sisters about the matter, in urgent but uncertain terms, regarding the queer . . . confrontation? Meeting? Serendipity? Even she had no wits sufficient to title the event. But it had a strange allure to it, despite the aspects about her new acquaintance that she found markedly offbeat . . . or perhaps because of these very idiosyncracies.

Her fascination soon became horror . . . and even _greater_ fascination . . . as Mother Magdalena gently, and in the loud strained voice that Odette was sorry to realize was necessary for her damaged eardrums, informed the former ballet dancer (who admitted openly to being a woman given to morbid curiosity and strange sympathies) of the identity and status of the man living in the underbelly of their sanctuary: He was indeed known only as Erik, for he refused to divulge a surname, so ashamed was he of the "cruelty of his mother;" he was a virtual genius of all arts and many sciences, including painting, architecture, set design, acting, theater magic, engineering, and _most _particularly, music.

Music, Odette had mused. That must have explained his unnaturally good skill at projecting his voice so that even she could hear him.

What, then, was the term C.G.?

Well, the abbess had chuckled, his idea of a joke. It stood for "Convent Ghost, the Phantom of the Convent." He had found it sporting since in the past he had been so infamously the "Phantom of the Opera" and it was quite laughable in comparison to deem oneself the guardian specter of a bunch of sweet old habit-swathed ladies.

All of the C.G.'s talents were, the abbess continued to explain as kindly as possible, balanced with the "artistic" banes of volatility, withdrawal, bitterness, and criticality; Erik had spent a good part of his childhood and adolescence in Persia and had lived the better part of his adulthood beneath and in the many winding, dark mazes, corridors, and crannies of the Opera Populaire, with living conditions accommodated by sole lifetime friend Antoinette Giry, yes, Odette's old ballet mistress and the very same woman who had both brought him here and confided in the abbess; a childhood of vaguely explained but markedly tainting violence, alienation, and grief had made him viciously repel human contact to the point of reclusion except at night hours, a temperamental condition somehow connected to the wearing of various theater masks. . .

And he had, in a final explosion of rage and grief, when the events of his childhood and adulthood converged and fiercely butted heads . . . _murdered_ two men affiliated with the Opera . . . and attempted the murder of another, a man who was practically French royalty, the youngest Vicomte de Chagny. The _reason_ for this sudden onslaught of violence, perhaps not the first in the man Erik's turbulent life, had been kept from the abbess, thus she could only speculate. And while the man was indeed prone to a caustic temper, he was for the most part spiritually broken and reticent to the notion of frittering away his talent and skill in solitude.

He had not once lifted a finger against any of the sisters; he had in fact responded to their occasional accommodations of his needs, such as that for food or soap or ink to write his music, with a stoic, understated politeness.

He was fine, perfectly cordial, Mother Magdalena concluded, having resorted to scrawling the information on a tablet to the partially deaf Odette, as long as no one _touched_ him. But, she added, with a sharp raising of her left eyebrow, Odette should take care not to tangle with him unnecessarily, for while he seemed chivalrously repelled by the notion of laying a finger on _any_ woman, he still had been known to play some nasty pranks on the ladies who had annoyed him in the past: He had publicly humiliated a Spanish prima donna by concocting a throat spray that closed her larynx, and had seduced her understudy, a Swedish girl affianced to the Opera's patron, into believing that he was a guardian angel sent by her late father to protect and coddle her.

When provoked, his spite apparently knew no end! 

Oh, and he liked cats. He really, really liked cats, especially Siamese cats.

In any case, the abbess had asserted to the now ashen-faced Odette, it was unwise to tempt fate and the shaken nerves of a "broken man." Odette had then been asked to pray for the soul of this lost stone-hearted creature of darkness, and ushered back to her bedroom. Neither she nor Mother Magdalena, nor any of the sisters, spoke another word of this mysterious misanthrope Erik.

_Murder_. The word rang through her ears now with a nasty personal relevance. She _knew_ a murderer, and, she mused ashamedly, she _still_ found him captivating. Or was he so capable of dilution, of simplification? Who was this man who suffered and sneered all the more for it?

Two weeks passed in a blink of an eye, and other than the occasional nervous jolt at the sound of scratching under the floorboards or a strange draught through her room windows, Odette put the angel of shadows whom she knew shared her living quarters out of her mind.

Until one night, at midnight precisely, there came a knock on her closed door. Was it locked? Well, if so, he could pick the lock, wasn't he a "theater magician?" She knew it, and he, for it had to be him again, somehow, must know it too. So Odette cleared her throat and called in a slightly wavering voice, "Come in."

The door creaked punctually open.

Then came the silence that one knows precedes a clamor, with silent energy—a confrontation of some sort. The rafters of the convent seemed, to Odette, to tremble with anticipation. Then it came.

"Mademoiselle likes her little token?" That voice, that same voice that threatened and charmed. That man of the shadows. There came the gentle whoosh of an opera cloak whisking about dress trousers. "You didn't mention it the last time we…met. Although I saw you wearing your slippers. Very good."

Odette glanced up from her needlepoint as nonchalantly as she could, and beheld him, that same lean lurker with the feverish blue eyes . . . Erik, that was his name . . . wearing yet another half-mask—a deep burgundy to match the richly adorned vestcoat beneath his black cloak and waistcoat. It seemed to make the eye in the obscured side of his face glow an even more madly bright shade of azure. Or perhaps it was the bizarrely fixated manner in which his eyes slightly widened to drink the sight of her form, while she sat quaintly engrossed in her craft—eyes gaping at her as though waiting for her to reveal some truer visage, as though she were actually not a mere refugee among nuns, but the Holy Grail or the key to the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, deceptively tame, chastely mounted upon the sole chair in her bedroom.

Her bedroom, the door of which she had indeed thought she had locked and which he indeed had gotten through . . .

She watched him slowly whet his lips, staring, while she ruminated on this.

What an unnerving man.

But Odette smiled with a benevolence to rival that of the Holy Virgin. "I like my token very much, Monsieur Fantome, it is excellently crafted, and the shoes as well," she crooned, reaching over to finger the woodcarved and hand-painted swan, its elegant neck, its body like a wisping white cirrus cloud. She thought perhaps she saw him start at this infamous title that had once so cursed him, or perhaps even more so at her knowledge that he was the same person as the hated "Opera Ghost," and in such close proximity to offering him a compliment. But she soon was convinced it had been her imagination. Either that or he recovered quickly and was an astonishingly good actor.

He stood there before her, utterly still, utterly expressionless, without smile or frown. A small glint of humor danced in his eyes, or perhaps she imagined it, too, for want of some human element in his statuesque person. She awaited action, or word. Nothing.

At last she realized he stood in patient vigil for _her_ to act, or speak, as mutely fascinated by her as any seasoned theatre-goer by the overture of a play. Those eyes seemed to glisten but a modicum brighter as she opened her mouth.

"You seemed uneasy in the light of the convent when last we met, monsieur."

"It is dim enough for my toleration, at this hour," he replied, crisply yet cordially. At once he fell silent again. Now, however, he was smiling, as though bestowing haughty favor as the opening act drew to its close.

Odette's eyes narrowed; she despised male games, and this man, however eccentric, however unusual in an attractively macabre way, was becoming annoyingly a practitioner of such things. So she plunged ahead. "They tell me you killed two men in the Opera Populaire two years ago."

"Oh, _'they'_ do, do they? Gossip is not beneath nuns after all, is it? How amusing . . ." The specter murmured to himself, bright eyes peering and blinking once more in that scheming, yet somehow simultaneously bewildered, manner.

"Don't you feel any regret for it, monsieur?"

Erik's smile deteriorated. His reply was violently unremorseful. "Joseph Buquet was a fat, womanizing dunkard, who _wasted_ space as a stage-hand and produced hordes of neglected bastard children!" His eyes blazed white-hot, like a steel poker fresh from fire. "And that tenor Piangi was the narcissistic lover of the Spanish _bitch-diva_ who _stood in the way of Christine's glory_!" He raised a black-gloved fist high; his zeal was that of a Puritan minister in the Americas.

"I see," Odette retorted composedly, her gentle voice cutting surprisingly strongly through the remaining ringing echoes of his outburst . . . . though his bitterness raised little bumps along the surface of her flesh. "And who is Christine?"

This only seemed to further nettle the Opera Ghost; his thin, vulpine nostrils curled as though at the stench of a carcass. When he spoke again his voice regained its wry, frosty calm. "Christine Daae . . . ." He snarled soft, inexplicable frustration, and caustically corrected himself: "Christine _de Chagny_ . . .was a very promising former pupil of mine."

Chagny, _de Chagny_, oh _now _she _certainly _understood. A woman who roused territorial and protective wrath and who now shared the surname of a man he had tried to kill. "Oh, a pupil. From the look on your face, a _pupil_? I bet she was." She scoffed softly.

His eyes burned again, in a manner that made her glad of the bolt on her convent bedchamber door….however ultimately useless. "Look, Mademoiselle," he leered, " no one ever said I did it, they just _found _Buquet hanging in the third floor set rafters, you understand? And as for the other one . . . "

"Oh, yes, I understand," she crooned, interrupting him with a small smile.

Erik's gaze narrowed to dagger slits. "You mock me."

And now Odette bristled, however softly. "You're not _important_ enough to mock! You're just a masked man who loiters his life away in shadows!"

His cheeks imploded sharply with an indignant gasp. Those sharp dark eyebrows plummeted on his pale forehead. "You really _are_ foolish to behave so _saucily_ with a man accused of _murder_!"

"I believe they were crimes of passion you wouldn't commit without the inciting context," she explained. "That they were _isolated_ incidents. That you want to get back at someone utterly unrelated to these men, or even to this Christine de Chagny, for that matter. Someone from _much_ longer ago. In fact, I _know_ it, monsieur." Her lips quirked with quiet but fierce triumph.

"Oh, _do_ you?" He laughed; it was a beautiful and terrible sound, a steady, rapid crescendo of cackling, maddened, agonized _"AHAHA's,"_ made mesmerizing by the baring of his lupine white teeth. Odette almost covered her ears to make the noise, both an aria and a crow's call, stop. But he stopped just at the brink of her capacity to bear it. _Purposefully,_ she mused. And then suddenly words were pouring from his lips, words inextricably mixing honey and venom, words of sardonic insane glee. She was both stunned and transfixed as he railed: "_Do you know all about my mother, woman_? And do you think that the anguish left by the events after her are _gone_? That I _magically was healed_ of my _rage_ of being _prostituted_ to a caravan of thieves and murderers charading as entertainers, _so that the bitch might be free of the sight of me, when I was but ten years old_? 'Ah, well, that was so long ago, Erik,' right? _'Let it go, Erik!'_ _AHAHAHA, _of course….I was once kissed by a _living woman_—here, but do not look! Here!" He jabbed at his pale forehead. "But do not look, Daroga," he began to putter bereft of his steam, in soft, panting, disjointed tones, not seeming any longer to be talking to her, to even realize where he was. "Here—do not look—here—but do not look, or the thought I am sure is _too dreadful to bear_!"

At last Odette found his utterly unanticipated onslaught of pain too much to endure without intercession. Her heart throbbed with strange sympathy. "Monsieur," she gently remonstrated, wondering what or who a "daroga" was, "I do not see the significant horror of a woman kissing you anywhere, aside that a man of your disposition might be rather exasperating object of affection for a sensible and stable-tempered lady."

He paused, cocking his head like a bird of prey, his nose curling in a peculiarly childlike expression of confusion. Then it passed, and his face was utterly placid again. And then, suddenly, he barked another laugh. Then again the stoicism. It was like a rapid waterfall-cycle of emotion unwilling to cease within him. God, to be inside his mind must be an exhaustive and torturous thing, whomever or whatever he really was. "That was really quite _amusing_, Mlle. Odette," he droned, in that controlled, sonorous tenor.

Odette allowed herself a small lip-quirk at his contradictory words and intonation. "You _sound _amused," she quipped, with a bit of harmless sarcasm.

"I am …._careful _with my emotions."

"Except for annoyance and anger."

"Vraiment, touché," he said, and then he actually smiled.

"And self-importance."

"Now you _wound _me." But his grin broadened, and his eyes began to sparkle quite vivaciously now. He circled her, drinking her in with soft relish. He began very softly to sing something in Italian, an aria or ballad of some sort; she recognized it as a Liszt and despite her sense, her body wracked with a thrilling tremor at his impossibly high, sweet, ethereal tenor:

_"I should like just one moment more_

_For my dream of love,_

_And I would be able to captivate you_

_With the sweetest songs from my heart._

_But you do not hear my cry_

And perhaps have forgotten when you held me tightly 

_And, amid kisses, whispered to me: _

_'I shall never forget you!'"_

He paused a moment, grinning like a child that has presented a homemade gift to an elder . . . and yet simultaneously like the most seasoned of seducers.

"_Sogno d'amore_, isn't it?" she croaked, much unsettled by the lyrics and the beauty with which she had been bombarded—but even more by her own hypnotized reaction, for she found loss of control disturbing. It was almost as if he was trying to exert some unholy power over her with those ambrosia-sweet words. "Liszt?"

"_Oui, my fellow musical virtuoso_!" he all but chirped, those arctic lapis eyes brightening and warming miraculously, as though in regard of a promising student, and he resumed, still pacing in circles round her, and his pronunciation of the sister European language of Italy was stunningly impeccable:

"_My love, if you knew how bitter it is!_

_Everything here still speaks to me of you._

_I weep and laugh and cry and speak and tremble_

_And hope, so as not to die!_

_But meanwhile my tremulous soul _

_Burns with pain_

_And a dream of love sparks into life:_

_Caresses, kisses, ecstasy I shall never know again!"_

His eyes burned joyously—almost madly, she noted, with the glee of finding another human being with which to commiserate some profound secret pain—as Odette's mouth mutely formed the words while he sang the final lines:

"_O beloved lips, o hands I adored,_

_I shall never be able to love like that again!_

_O dear voice, o heart which opened to me,_

_Why did love come to an end?_

_Love, love, love!"_

Odette's nose wrinkled as she completed the verse silently alongside this man's exquisite voice. "I always thought that was a silly song," she half-mumbled, referring to the line about never loving again. "So dreadfully narrow-minded and hopeless…so fatalistic."

"Oh, you think so, mademoiselle? _Not_ a romantic?" He actually tossed his raven head back for an instant and snorted a laugh that should make her relieved by his sudden burst of real humanity, but instead made her feel rather demeaned and, subsequently, rather impatient. He continued to circle her, watching her, eyes still ….glazed over.

She could envision a vulture or an archangel doing exactly the same thing, so it was, ultimately, impossible to gauge the action as menacing or pleasing. This of course made the entire performance all the more disturbing. But now this Erik fellow's face seemed so benevolently delighted that she chose the latter. He really looked much younger than she had though he was, now, in the soft but clearer glow of her room. He was barely past the first five years of thirty, and his manner was that of one even younger, while the gloss and oily charm of a sophisticated old man had colored his actions in the shadows below.

Yes, Odette liked this Erik fellow far better in the light.

"_Romance _has _nothing_ to do with it. It is either _having hope_ or _lacking _it that is the _vital _element. Do I wound you _again_, good Monsieur? Well, perhaps you could justify your arrogance. What is it you do for a living . . . _Erik_? Are you really quite _amazing_ at something?" Odette's thrusts and pulls through her embroidery became pointedly crisper, and she hid the mischief, even the flirtation, in her hazel eyes, by concentration on the nuance of the stitch.

To her consternation, he suddenly was there, swooping down in her light; his fingers, long and masculine but clearly capable of delicate gestures, were seizing her needle and thread and unraveling her last stitch. "Forgive me for imposing, but this will give you some vexation later. Let me retrace your stitch to…yes, there we are." He handed it back to her, and she blinked, examining her work, trying to see what he had changed so rapidly. She resumed her labor and found it remarkably faster and the results better suited to her desire for a perfection of the craft. She looked up into his fiercely intense cobalt eyes and found them greatly softened as he gazed at her, in such breath's nearness. She did not ask him what he had done, but her eyes were both grateful and inquisitive. He smiled again, a different kind of smile, one unlike any other she had seen from him. But then it passed, and he once again grew somber. "Well, I do sew for one," he remarked, an infinitesimal lilt of humor in his tone. "But it is not my 'career,' per se." He proceeded to tick off every skill and hobby that Mother Magdalena had previously divulged. "I am an actor, an architect, a dancer, a set designer, a magician, and foremost a musician. I compose and sing operas…. _Alors,_ at least I like to _think_ of them as operas."

Odette was fiercely intrigued. "Oh! _Operas!_ There was a time when I danced for many a ballet . . ." She paused, holding her tongue, frowning, inwardly punishing herself for remembering a happier time. " . . . But you know that already, and…anyway, that is not important. What work of yours has been put to performance?"

He smiled cynically. "Only one. I titled it _Don Juan Triumphant._ It was rather rudely interrupted for . . . personal reasons. A bit traumatic, really."

"Did it involve this pupil of yours?" she queried in a voice almost a whisper. "This Christine? And was she this . . . 'living woman' . . . "

He did not respond. His hand reached sharply to the obscured side of his face and the fingers clawed tightly to the surface of the mask, as though he feared she might reach across the distance between them and rip it off. That hand stayed there as he turned the conversation on its head. "You said you danced ballet?"

Odette answered as evasively as her new friend had regarding his operas.

The conversation to follow passed almost to quickly for her before his eyes caught the time in his pocketwatch and he bowed, that same stiff diplomatic bow, and bid her goodnight. He kissed the top of her hand and his lips, which she might have expected to be dry and cold and brittle like the better part of his personality, were gentle, soft, very warm, and slightly wet. She shivered and tried to hide it as his eyes met hers one last time. "I don't want to exhaust you…I am told you endured much this past week, Mademoiselle. Yes, indeed. Nuns _do_ gossip, I fear." He slid to the door, turned and cast her another reluctant smile, and closed the door behind him.

And again Odette found her room painfully empty.

What was worse…she missed her Opera Ghost the moment he was gone.


End file.
